Ormond gets new trail with potential to become park

This is the route children in Ormond Beach's Forrest Hills subdivision take to walk to Tomoka Elementary. The city will soon pave the path and provide lights for safety. [News-Journal/T.S. Jarmusz]▲

This image shows the route children walking to school and others could take along Ormond Beach's newest multiuse path. [Image from the City of Ormond Beach]▲

ORMOND BEACH — Residents may soon have a park for their enjoyment and the safety of children walking to school.

The city is planning to build a 10-foot wide, roughly ¾-mile paved multi-use trail that will connect homes in the Forrest Hills subdivision area to West Granada Boulevard, Ormond Beach deputy city engineer Shawn Finley said.

The area is mostly city land that borders Misners Branch stream, and currently, children walk a wooded path when taking the neighborhood shortcut to nearby Tomoka Elementary School, Finley said.

Ormond Beach Mayor Bill Partington was one of them.

"As a kid from 6 or 7 years old to 10 or 11 years old, who walked that trail along the creek, those are my old stomping grounds," Partington said. "And so to see what will be a beautiful paved sidewalk is exciting for those children that live in that neighborhood."

The trail isn't being built just for the sake of it. In 2008, what is now known as the River to Sea Transportation Planning Organization conducted a bicycle and pedestrian study and one of its recommendations called for building a trail that would allow children who lived in the neighborhood to walk to school safer, Finley said.

"Students living in the Forest Hills subdivision no longer receive bus transportation. This study recommends that the city of Ormond Beach pursue funding for a trail connection with a pedestrian bridge between this subdivision and Mayfield Terrace," the study says. This project is further described as a recommended priority project."

Forrest Hills resident Diane Dodge, who has lived in the area 19 years, said she thought a paved trail would be safer for children heading to school. However, being that the area is secluded, she also thought regular police check ups should occur.

The trail, which will be complete in the spring, will cost about $724,000. Because the Florida Department of Transportation is funding part it, the city's cost works out to about $200,000, Finley said.

The trail will have lights for safety and feature an 80-foot wooden boardwalk that will lessen the environmental impact over a steep grade change. Finley said no historical or specimen trees would need to be removed and that the city's goal was to "preserve as many trees as we can."

The trail will be open to anyone and could later become a park.

"The other exciting part is that it has the potential to someday turn into a linear park between Granada Boulevard and Hand Avenue," Partington said. "There's just a few other segments that would need to be paved and Ormond Beach would have a beautiful linear park right in the heart of the city there, and so that's an exciting prospect for the future."

Finley said the trails in the city's nearby Central Park also are linear, and with city approval the trail could one day feature benches, exercise stations and more.

Noting how an improved trail could lead to a healthier lifestyle, get children off of busy streets and free up congestion for parents picking up or dropping off their children, Ormond Beach Deputy Mayor Troy Kent said the trail was "a huge win our community."

SOSEScript: ampanalytics.php5 failed executing with the following error:
Error on line 12 position 1: file_get_contents(): SSL operation failed with code 1. OpenSSL Error messages:
error:1407742E:SSL routines:SSL23_GET_SERVER_HELLO:tlsv1 alert protocol version
Error on line 12 position 1: file_get_contents(): Failed to enable crypto
Error on line 12 position 1: file_get_contents(http://www.news-journalonline.com/?template=ampanalytics): failed to open stream: operation failed
Error on line 19 position 1: Invalid argument supplied for foreach()